A Continuing Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism?1

CHAPTER EIGHT A CONTINUING INTERLUDE IN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM?1 The following reassessment of present-day New Testament textual 131 criticism requires, by its very nature, a brief statement of the cir- cumstances that occasioned it. Seven years ago, in the W. H. P. Hatch Memorial Lecture at the 1973 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I attempted in fifty minutes an adventure- some—if not audacious—assessment of the entire scope of New Testament textual criticism during the past century. Though this was an instructive exercise for me and one that others report as instructive also for them, it was inevitable that so bold an undertaking would elicit sharp criticism. The first hint of this came from Münster in 1976,2 but more clearly within the past year or so in an invita- tion to subscribe to a Festschrift for Matthew Black containing an article by Kurt Aland of Münster with an announced title—appearing as it did in English—that had a highly familiar ring: “The Twentieth- Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism.” Obviously this was the title of the Hatch Lecture, which, following its presen- tation, had been published in the 1974 volume of JBL.3 When the Festschrift itself appeared, it seemed obvious from Professor Aland’s article4 (which, except for its title, was written in German) that some reassessment of the course and significance of twentieth century New 132 Testament textual criticism was in order. Late in September 1979, 1 A paper presented originally in the New Testament Textual Criticism Section, Society of Biblical Literature, New York City, 17 November 1979, now consider- ably revised for publication. 2 Barbara Aland, “Neutestamentliche Textkritik Heute,” VF 21 (1976) 5. 3 E. J. Epp, “The Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism,” JBL 93 (1974) 386–414. A major portion was translated into Japanese and published in Studia Textus Novi Testamenti 103–109 (1975) 856–60; 866–68; 875–76; 890–92; 898–900; 907–8. 4 Though the title is English (“The Twentieth-Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism”), the article is in German in Ernest Best and R. McL. Wilson (eds.), Text and Interpretation: Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979) 1–14. 186 chapter eight Aland’s article was reprinted in the annual report of his Münster foundation for New Testament textual research, now under the title of “Die Rolle des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Geschichte der neutesta- mentlichen Textkritik.”5 The introduction to this reprint claims that in the JBL article I “take the floor as spokesman for American textual criticism,”6 a claim I would renounce emphatically. It indicates also that only occasion- ally has Professor Aland “let himself be lured out of his reserve” to reply to views that disparage the way the Münster Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung has assembled the data of New Testament research or that go (as he phrases it) in an impossible direction. Thus, quite explicitly the JBL essay was seen as a challenge both to the views of Professor Aland himself and to the work and significance of the Münster Institut, for which he undeniably is the spokesman. Certainly his reply is negatively—and, in its intent, destructively— critical, sometimes harshly so, yet no one could welcome this response more than I, for the primary purpose of the Hatch Memorial Lecture was to evince responses that might help us all to see where we—as late twentieth century New Testament textual critics—stood. More particularly, its major thrust was to raise questions (as well as to offer some answers) as to where we stood methodologically, that is, where we found ourselves with reference to a theory of the New Testament text and with respect to an understanding of the history of the earliest New Testament text. In precisely these respects, I sub- mit—perhaps with no less arrogance and audacity than in 1973— that little could have been more disappointing than the lengthy response from Aland, for his argumentation at point after point seems to confirm the selfsame conclusions at which the Hatch Lecture arrived and which he is attempting to refute. This observation is presented, not with any sense of self-satisfaction, but out of deep regret, for the response (while it does enlighten us as to Aland’s own method of establishing the original New Testament text and does refer to methodological procedures employed in the important computer 5 K. Aland, “Die Rolle des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Geschichte der neutesta- mentlichen Textkritik,” Bericht der Hermann Kunst-Stiftung zur Förderung der neutesta- mentlichen Textforschung für die Jahre 1977 bis 1979 (ed. Hermann Kunst; Münster/W.: Hermann Kunst-Stiftung, 1979) 28–42. The first two paragraphs and the last few lines of the original article were omitted in the reprint. 6 Ibid., 28..

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